Paris Sewers Give City of Light
A Fiber-Optic Edge

Mayor Offers System
As Lower-Cost Route
For High-Speed Line

By

Nina Sovich

Updated Nov. 10, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

PARIS -- The sewers of Paris, which once spirited out partisans and revolutionaries, are ushering in a technology revolution.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe is offering telecommunications companies breaks on fees for using the city's infrastructure to lay fiber-optic cable through the city's 1,800-kilometer, or 1,120-mile, sewer system.

Iliad SA recently announced plans for networks that provide service that would be twice as...